Weekly letter May 16

May 14, 2005
Dear Family,
What a busy week! This week the rain started again. Actually it started a week ago Friday as Rilla and a group of youth was leaving on a campout. It rained them out. They returned Sabbath evening wet and cold. After supper and dry clothes, they were able to complete their activities at the church. On Sunday morning they taught honors for knot tying, first aide, and trees. It was a huge success. Rilla is looking forward to planning their next activities.
Since the rain has started we are trying to shore up all of little ends that cause such misery, such as leaky roofs and missing gutters.
This week also has seen the finishing touches put on many of our clinic remodeling projects. The wall is up in the med room with a new window to fill prescriptions. The lab has tile and paint. It is still lacking a shelf but for the most part it is done for now. We have painted until our paint ran out. The outside of the clinic all has a new coat as do many walls on the inside. More painting is needed at a later date. They poured the lid for the septic system on Friday morning. The well and pump have been shored up, a little deeper with new water coming in. It took three days of cleaning to put the clinic back so that we can start seeing patients on Monday.
On the home front� Brandel and Bethany have made lots of little steps this week. Brandel can say "Bethany", "rain coat", "Rilla", "hammock", "church" and some new Miskito words. He is also pedaling his bicycle. He has discovered "bomboms" which are the suckers on the stick. He loves them and asks for them every time he goes to the village with us. He knows the store ladies and always go behind the counters, where they give him one when we are not looking. Brandel has decided that most all clothes are hot. If you ask him if he wants a shirt or shorts or pajamas, he will say "no hot". He will get the hymnal off the shelve and walk around singing. He really likes rice and potatoes. When we tell him it is time to eat first he will ask if it is rice, if not then potatoes. We had pasta the other day (which he can also say) but he was very unhappy that we didn't have rice. This is in contrast to Clint who does not like rice and needs it disguised any way possible, like with gravy or tvp or cabbage.
Bethany is continuing her independence. She will now not let anyone feed her. She has to do it herself, and actually she is not too bad, more times than not the spoon makes it to her mouth. She has also learned to climb on and off the rocking horse. Her feet don't reach the floor when she is sitting on it but she gets on and off rather quickly. If you leave any gates open she is gone in a flash, shutting the gate behind her. Of course she doesn't stop to put on her shoes before she goes!
This week celebrated Fatima's (the pastor's wife) birthday. She is 22. Rilla baked a cake. We all decided that it was so good that we should celebrate birthdays for our family so we could get more cake. I don't think that Rilla was excited about doing all the work to bake a birthday cake every week but it was a nice thought.
Since the rain has re-started we have begun planting. We had 20 coco plants that we were waiting to plant. We started planting them this week. We also got some more banana plants. I think that for us the key for growing things is going to be trees, banana trees, mango trees, tropical pear trees, coconut trees, avocado trees, papaya trees, citrus trees, etc. So I started buying and planting again this week. Papaya takes less than a year to grow and start producing. Avocado, mango, and citrus all take much longer. We probably will never see them grown and producing but the next missionaries will have them to appreciate. The coconut trees can be faster producing in 3-5 yrs. We might see some of them bearing, depending on how well we take care of them.
I also have some small plants in pots on the porch. My tomatoes and peppers have flowers on them. I was out in the garden to look it over also. We stopped watering it a few weeks ago since nothing was prospering. Now there are two small (very small) pepper plants that have one little pepper on each of them. Also, I am trying beets again in a large pot just off the porch so that it gets some of the rain. We will see. One of my bags of beet seeds germinated and the other one didn't. I don't know which was which. Now I will have to try them both separately to see which one works. They tell me that now is a good time to plant corn too. Unfortunately, I wasted all my corn in the last two time I planted it. We will have to purchase some corn seed in Port this week.
Love
Marilyn, Clint, Brandel and Bethany